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hazy_amber 's review for:
Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, 1921-1933
by Anne Applebaum
For obvious reasons, as a Ukrainian, lately I've been drawn a lot to the books on Ukrainian history and literary and language studies. This is how I ran across this book.
There are so many questions in need of answering for all of us right now, that I think it's inevitable to be turning more and more to different sources trying to make a comprehensive and cohesive picture of our past. The history and the literature, all of our heritage and the ways they were presented to us growing up are now being brought into question in the attempts to separate imperialistic and colonialist narratives from the actual truth of my people.
Of course, truth can only come from the experiences of many people who lived through them.
While I was preparing for an academic style non-fiction piece that will take me days (no offence, Orest Subtelny), I couldn't put this one down.
I think that Anne Applebaum, thanks to a certain degree of removal from the story, gives a compassionate take on a period of history that is full of tragedy, death and repressed grief. She provides an exposé of the state of the nation prior to the actual years of Holodomor, and paints a picture in which it becomes obvious the extent that impero-colonialist propaganda, regardless of its tsarist or communist origins, was ready to go to in attempts to not lose its food source as they saw Ukrainian lands. This is a story first and foremost about people on the both side, and this is one thing that I came to particularly appreciate - there is none of "passive tense facts" narrative, there are people and names behind the decision, as opposed to "dekulakization was happening, the grain was expropriated, the livestock taken away". There was no passive tense in any of these actions that were carried over by humans, blood and flesh, and I appreciate that the author acknowledges this and doesn't make it sound as if this was an inevitable force of nature.
So when I mention a certain degree of removal, I use it in an appreciative sense.
I'd like to mention that in the past decades, Holodomor has been a pawn in the hands of many political forces in Ukraine, and therefore many internal investigations and projects inevitably come under scrutiny. Not to mention that it's significantly more complicated to be dispassionate to any degree when you know that your own family members, whom you might know and whom you might have spoken to or speak to still, have been on one or the other side of the horrors of this story. While I know that it's impossible to be completely objective, I think that not needing to face the truth about your own family members as you are writing a book is probably working in the author's favour.
I am not exaggerating, saying that you can put names and faces and voices to the stories that are being told - because I definitely could.
My great-grandaunt, who is alive and well right now, as much as you can be well in Ukraine at the moment, was born in 1925 and lived through Holodomor. When the book mentions the people that were taken away by Nazis in the 40s - it's her face I see, because that's what happened to her.
When the conversation turns to those in diaspora who tried to raise awareness abroad up until 80-90s - I think of my great-grandfather who escaped the Soviet regime and for over 20 years had no contact with his family. When he had to run for his life, quite literally, as the Soviets didn't care for POWs coming back, his older daughter was 4 and his younger daughter was a newborn. The next time they managed to reestablish contact, his older daughter already had a daughter of her own. Till the day he died, my great-grandfather will never manage to truly become a part of his own family and will struggle to regain contact at least with his own children, let alone next generations, and to try to instill his beliefs in independence for Ukraine - the beliefs that he couldn't communicate when they were growing up because the family was torn apart.
When Ms. Applebaum describes the confiscation of everything edible in Ukrainian villages and mentions the rods, suddenly I remember my grandmother telling me about these rods as well, even though she is recalling the stories of the grown-ups from her childhood - she was born 3 years after Holodomor. I forgot the piece about the rods because it was overshadowed by the horrible story of someone in their village shot in front of their kids for a bucket of grain that they buried under a tree and that was found by the state representatives tasked with expropriation duties.
When the book describes how a hospitable nation turned suspicious about everyone, outsiders and neighbours alike, I remember my mom saying how her great-grandmother would never enter the house of this one relative in the village - she will mention it to mom once that "this is the house of the people who came to us and proceeded with dekulakization". Her husband was a talented bricklayer and successful farmer with a large family, who together with his friend bought a dilapidated red brick structure (a rarity in southern Ukraine with its main building material being clay and straw bricks) and built a mill and two houses out of it, one for his family and one for his friend's. He was arrested and sent to the camps, while she and her 6 children were thrown out of the beautiful red brick house, as is, in the middle of winter. They will walk 15 km to the neighbouring town on foot, and the youngest, a baby boy, their only boy, will not survive the journey. They will be taken in by the local Jewish family, and just like she will never forget those who came to her to take things away, she will never forget the ones who had shown her kindness, and any and all antisemitism was shut down in my family ever since.
My family was in the south and their village was next to a river, so maybe that saved them, and so I get to sit here today telling this story, in a foreign language too.
The story of the resilience that was forced on my people (imagine my great-grandparents actually having a child mere 3 years after all this), of the destroying of millions, including those who represented the cultural and political activism and acted on it, of the generational trauma that persists till this day, of the identity crisis that we are facing right now, as well as all the lies that were spun around that very national identity is a difficult thing to wrap head around, but crucial nevertheless for all of Ukrainian nation to be able to move forward.
There are so many questions in need of answering for all of us right now, that I think it's inevitable to be turning more and more to different sources trying to make a comprehensive and cohesive picture of our past. The history and the literature, all of our heritage and the ways they were presented to us growing up are now being brought into question in the attempts to separate imperialistic and colonialist narratives from the actual truth of my people.
Of course, truth can only come from the experiences of many people who lived through them.
While I was preparing for an academic style non-fiction piece that will take me days (no offence, Orest Subtelny), I couldn't put this one down.
I think that Anne Applebaum, thanks to a certain degree of removal from the story, gives a compassionate take on a period of history that is full of tragedy, death and repressed grief. She provides an exposé of the state of the nation prior to the actual years of Holodomor, and paints a picture in which it becomes obvious the extent that impero-colonialist propaganda, regardless of its tsarist or communist origins, was ready to go to in attempts to not lose its food source as they saw Ukrainian lands. This is a story first and foremost about people on the both side, and this is one thing that I came to particularly appreciate - there is none of "passive tense facts" narrative, there are people and names behind the decision, as opposed to "dekulakization was happening, the grain was expropriated, the livestock taken away". There was no passive tense in any of these actions that were carried over by humans, blood and flesh, and I appreciate that the author acknowledges this and doesn't make it sound as if this was an inevitable force of nature.
So when I mention a certain degree of removal, I use it in an appreciative sense.
I'd like to mention that in the past decades, Holodomor has been a pawn in the hands of many political forces in Ukraine, and therefore many internal investigations and projects inevitably come under scrutiny. Not to mention that it's significantly more complicated to be dispassionate to any degree when you know that your own family members, whom you might know and whom you might have spoken to or speak to still, have been on one or the other side of the horrors of this story. While I know that it's impossible to be completely objective, I think that not needing to face the truth about your own family members as you are writing a book is probably working in the author's favour.
I am not exaggerating, saying that you can put names and faces and voices to the stories that are being told - because I definitely could.
My great-grandaunt, who is alive and well right now, as much as you can be well in Ukraine at the moment, was born in 1925 and lived through Holodomor. When the book mentions the people that were taken away by Nazis in the 40s - it's her face I see, because that's what happened to her.
When the conversation turns to those in diaspora who tried to raise awareness abroad up until 80-90s - I think of my great-grandfather who escaped the Soviet regime and for over 20 years had no contact with his family. When he had to run for his life, quite literally, as the Soviets didn't care for POWs coming back, his older daughter was 4 and his younger daughter was a newborn. The next time they managed to reestablish contact, his older daughter already had a daughter of her own. Till the day he died, my great-grandfather will never manage to truly become a part of his own family and will struggle to regain contact at least with his own children, let alone next generations, and to try to instill his beliefs in independence for Ukraine - the beliefs that he couldn't communicate when they were growing up because the family was torn apart.
When Ms. Applebaum describes the confiscation of everything edible in Ukrainian villages and mentions the rods, suddenly I remember my grandmother telling me about these rods as well, even though she is recalling the stories of the grown-ups from her childhood - she was born 3 years after Holodomor. I forgot the piece about the rods because it was overshadowed by the horrible story of someone in their village shot in front of their kids for a bucket of grain that they buried under a tree and that was found by the state representatives tasked with expropriation duties.
When the book describes how a hospitable nation turned suspicious about everyone, outsiders and neighbours alike, I remember my mom saying how her great-grandmother would never enter the house of this one relative in the village - she will mention it to mom once that "this is the house of the people who came to us and proceeded with dekulakization". Her husband was a talented bricklayer and successful farmer with a large family, who together with his friend bought a dilapidated red brick structure (a rarity in southern Ukraine with its main building material being clay and straw bricks) and built a mill and two houses out of it, one for his family and one for his friend's. He was arrested and sent to the camps, while she and her 6 children were thrown out of the beautiful red brick house, as is, in the middle of winter. They will walk 15 km to the neighbouring town on foot, and the youngest, a baby boy, their only boy, will not survive the journey. They will be taken in by the local Jewish family, and just like she will never forget those who came to her to take things away, she will never forget the ones who had shown her kindness, and any and all antisemitism was shut down in my family ever since.
My family was in the south and their village was next to a river, so maybe that saved them, and so I get to sit here today telling this story, in a foreign language too.
The story of the resilience that was forced on my people (imagine my great-grandparents actually having a child mere 3 years after all this), of the destroying of millions, including those who represented the cultural and political activism and acted on it, of the generational trauma that persists till this day, of the identity crisis that we are facing right now, as well as all the lies that were spun around that very national identity is a difficult thing to wrap head around, but crucial nevertheless for all of Ukrainian nation to be able to move forward.